Bus Conversations

OK, its not the buses that are talking!

When I used to travel by train the rule was sit in your seat and pretend the world ends a few inches from your body. Buses are different. There is a level of conversation that just simple happens.

Two old ladies have told me their life story, but this is to be a short post.

It's the conversations you just overhear that I'm talking about. You are compelled to continue listening to because they are happening right behind you. Two resent ones come to mind. The first I only caught part of as the other person in the conversation was miles away.

"....... ..... Carrie and Dan have split up"

I know a couple called Carrie and Dan - it is very unlikely that they have split up, but my attention is grabbed.

"He came in the other day and said he was leaving." pause "And now he's gone". Dan I think is a painter and decorator - definitely not the Dan of the couple I know - back to my own world.

"The sixties were great, much better than now" ... "I was engaged, but he took all my money so I shoved him" .. "The one I've got now has always been good to me, has yours?" ... "Yes, the sixties were great, much better then than it is now". If you know the typical Monty Python woman read it in that voice. The conversation was repeated a few times. Each subject was interspersed with memories of the sixties. "I'm sixty-one, and I've never known a better time than the sixties, I saw the Beatles you know, shook their hands I did". "You could go anywhere then, not like now"

I thought that the lady was old, by the way she was talking, but no - she is only a few years older than me. I have my own memories of the sixties, I was just about a teenager in that decade. I thought of San Fransisco. I though of my early ideas of hippies, and 'free love', by which I now know they mean sex, and it all sounded very good. There's a line in the song, 'there's a whole generation with a new explanation' - lovely ideals - especially then, but not very practical. There was only ever one generation with a new explanation and the explanation split history from BC to AD, and involved some of the least gentle people. I digress.

At the hospital I bought a ticket from the driver and as I couldn't find my money it was a daily, not a weekly, but he gave me a return to Basildon not Chelmsford. At Basildon bus garage I spoke to him about it and he agreed to let me buy the weekly - I had found my money. His relief drive arrived part way into the conversation and said "Can't do that!". You can, he did.
Some of the drivers don't know how to get the ticket I have out of their machine, so I've listened to those that do, and can tell them the menu its on. They are a mixed bunch, the company does not seem to have any policy about how its drivers respond - odd in the noughties.